Des Voeux Central Road

Des Voeux Road Central [DVRC] is a complex and dynamic place that continually remakes itself. It is multifaceted. It blends the richness of Hong Kong's traditional retail and urban fabric with the global business and banking-intensive metropolis of which it is a part.

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The project must address two fundamental issues. On the one hand, to make the section of the street friendlier by reducing traffic to enable the street to be occasionally left as a large public pedestrian space. On the other hand, to create an artificial atmosphere to make the outdoor space more comfortable in Hong Kong's hot and humid climate. All this, moreover, must be removable and, in any case, it must be possible to build it in phases so that the city can check whether the strategy proposed is correct and meets expectations and can be developed according to a process of successive improvements. 

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We have proposed five urban elements in the form of nodes that are built at the five critical points of the street. These nodes solve specific problems of accessibility, connection or protection from the climate and therefore obey quantifiable technical and urban requirements. In addition, each of them configures a different environment and responds and reacts to the existing programme and interacts as part of the neighbourhood, encouraging citizens to gather and make use of the new space. This is achieved by combining programmes, educational and artistic uses, public-private partnerships with cost-effective initiatives and collaborative government offices. The ensemble is designed with a flexible, lightweight, demountable and adaptable modular system, similar to scaffolding, that becomes a platform for multiple interventions for all citizens, a design that adapts and facilitates the future development of Des Voeux Road Central.

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